


your heart with mine

by lochTenderness (theseourbodies)



Series: Adventure! [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dungeons & Dragons, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Loss, Ranger Sawamura Daichi, References to past trauma involving near death of a companion, Warlock Oikawa Tooru, briefly implied character death, but no actual character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26279689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/lochTenderness
Summary: Our favorite adventuring captains return!Someone attempts to take something important from Oikawa, and Daichi learns some new things about his companions.
Relationships: Bokuto Koutarou & Oikawa Tooru, Hanamaki Takahiro & Iwaizumi Hajime & Matsukawa Issei & Oikawa Tooru, Kuroo Tetsurou & Sawamura Daichi, Oikawa Tooru & Ushijima Wakatoshi, Sawamura Daichi & Oikawa Tooru
Series: Adventure! [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909402
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	your heart with mine

**Author's Note:**

> This is unofficially for Seijou Week 2020, for the day 4 prompt "Loss"! Since no other members of the team besides Oikawa are actually in this fic, I won't be adding it to the collection, but! Here you go!
> 
> (also sorry not sorry about the recurrence of ~~lizard Tendou~~ Ushijima's familiar, i'm just very attached now, there's no going back. yes i know monitor lizards are huge, I KNOW, but like, ushijima has those shoulders for a Reason.)
> 
> Set before the events of [with the help of your good hands](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25864087)

When it happens, it’s quick. The night is cooler than the heat and damp of the close, tight tavern, and Daichi has abandoned even the open air porch where Kuroo and Bokuto have set up their court of fools for the night. He rests against the outer wall, content to keep track of the two of them by the sounds of their voices; through the opening beside him, he can just see Oikawa as well, favoring the stifling heat of the interior but still slumped up against a wall at the very edges of the crowd. It’s a miracle Daichi’s looking at just the right time to see clever hands working against the ties of the dark leather wrap that keeps Oikawa’s staff cradled to his back. He’s just about to raise an indignant warning when Oikawa’s pale hand snaps around the thief’s thin wrist and hauls him around to face Oikawa. His grip is punishing, white knuckled, but the thief stays silent until Oikawa rises to his full height and half hurls him out of the open doorway leading to the quiet, dark innyard. 

Daichi darts forward, following his companion on swift, silent feet. Oikawa ignores him utterly, snarling instead at the man before him, “Did you really not wonder why a warlock would carry a staff, fool?” 

Almost too fast for even Daichi’s keen eyes to follow, Oikawa drew his staff from its soft carrier and whipped it around and up so that it was braced against his strong right arm, held butt-end forward. Perhaps it was the swift, sure motion, perhaps it was an element of the staff itself, but for the first time Daichi saw the sharp end of the staff free of its perpetual layer of mud. He saw it for what it was: a spear head, glinting like polished diamond in the fading sunlight as if no dirt had ever hidden its gleam. The planes that met to form the razor edges and the menacing tip wavered with a ribbon of blue when they shifted—it was the finest bladed weapon Daichi had ever had the pleasure of looking upon. And it was indeed a weapon; Oikawa’s controlled swing had flung the ornament on top of the staff—on the butt of the spear, Daichi realizes belatedly—away carelessly. The only ornament that remained were the two solid steel wings bracketing the long socket, curving delicately up towards the point. 

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Oikawa asks, voice honey-thick with fake sweetness. Their would-be thief knows better than to look away from the weapon, and Daichi silently commends him. Oikawa steps right with thoughtless grace, and the man facing him steps, too. They circle one another slowly with the spear held aloft, unwavering between them. 

“Oikawa,” Daichi murmurs, a warning—he will follow whatever play the warlock pursues, but it will not be without putting in his two cents, first. Daichi flicks his eyes to the side, seeking Kuroo almost on instinct; for once he is grateful to find their wizard already looking his way, instead of annoyed. To Kuroo’s credit, he only leers for a second more before he reads something in Daichi’s look. Daichi jerks his chin up, just for good measure, but Kuroo has already looked away to grab Bokuto’s attention. Turning his attention back to the fraught standstill in front of him again, Daichi hears the call of a screech owl from a human throat—a strange sound for these forests, but not strange to his party. If Ushijima is near, he will come immediately at that call. 

“Noted,” Oikawa responds to the silent admonition before Daichi can continue. If he’s noticed Daichi gathering the group, he doesn’t say anything else. “Well, friend? Isn’t it beautiful? No dirt will cling to it; no edge will ever dull its own. It is Hebgwaedh, and believe me when I tell you that it is more important to me than my own life, the lives of my party, and every innocent life in a ten-league radius. It is certainly more important than a miserable soul like you.” 

“ _Hebgwaedh_ _?”_ Daichi can just hear Bokuto whisper behind him; he and Kuroo are no more than a few feet behind Daichi, carefully watching his back and Oikawa’s in the nearly abandoned innyard. 

“Oath-keeper, roughly,” Kuroo hushes back, but a stronger voice, un-hushed, corrects him a second later. 

“It means ‘bound by the oath.’” Ushijima doesn’t bother to stay behind Daichi and out of Oikawa’s peripheral; he steps up boldly, the monitor lizard body of his familiar peaking his serpentine head over Ushijima‘s shoulder with interest. It tastes the air when Daichi glances their way, meeting Daichi’s eyes unflinchingly. His master’s face, however, looks as troubled as Daichi has ever seen the usually impassive elf look.

“Well alright then, know-it-all-san.”

Daichi hushes them urgently, but if Oikawa’s heard them, he doesn’t acknowledge the exchange. He and the thief have stopped circling, and for one fraught moment, the forest seems to still completely as well. There is a lull of sound from the open doorway to the tavern, and the clunk and drag of wooden steins on wooden tables is so dull it vanishes. Even Daichi cannot bring himself to breathe.

When Oikawa finally moves, it’s like no spear work that Daichi has ever witnessed in his life. The blade _sings_ as Oikawa twirls and swings the solid wood haft over his head simultaneously. His momentum halts, and with it the blade stops just touching the man’s neck; in the deathly still night air, Daichi’s sensitive nose picks up the smell of fresh blood. The man stands frozen. Oikawa had moved to quickly for any of his seasoned companions to react properly; a backwater thief—admittedly one stealthy enough to get close enough to Oikawa to touch his equipment—never had a chance. Oikawa has both hands on the staff now, one braced near the butt and the other gripping comfortably toward the middle. He shifts minutely and the other man hisses and begins to pant, though if it’s from the pain of the spear head shifting or just sheer nerves, Daichi can’t possibly tell.

Oikawa’s eyes bleed light in the near darkness; the air around him crackles. His half-heritage is less obvious when he’s like this, cloaked in power and furious—it hardens the lines of his face, obliterating familiar softness, and emphasizes the sharp points of his ears through his hair; his lips, pressed tight and bloodless, make his mouth look especially severe. Daichi shivers, unsettled. Oikawa has a flexible personality, more so than any other half-elf Daichi’s ever spent time with, but in this moment Daichi sees none of that, now. Oikawa is angry, angrier than Daichi can believe over such a small-time criminal, and a quickly thwarted criminal act.

When he speaks, Oikawa’s voice carries a strange resonance. “Run along, little thief,” Oikawa says into the dead air between him and his terrified opponent. “Remember this mercy and consider it before you lay your hand on anything else that any adventurer deems important enough to hold so close.”

The man trembles for another second, stuck, until Kuroo finally snaps, “Go, fool!” He breaks and runs back toward the forest recklessly. Daichi winces at the sound he makes, but he’s grateful the man fianly saw reason.

Kuroo’s familiar weight collapses against Daichi’s back with a deep sigh, his arms flopping over Daichi’s shoulders. “Well that was exciting, but let’s never do that again, please. These aren’t exactly the friendliest of villagefolk toward non-humans; I don’t want to even imagine what would have happened if yours truly hadn’t cast that very convenient muffling spell over us.”

Daichi, glances back to look Kuroo in the face. He’s grateful, as ever, for Kuroo’s fast thinking—thinking about the odd stillness around them, he can almost sense the edges of the spell. As for the rest, he hadn’t picked up on that, himself; but then, he also hadn’t been terribly tempted to spend long in the tavern, either. “We should move on for the night, then,” he suggests, looking back towards their two resident non-humans. He was already anticipating Oikawa’s return to familiar, over-blown whining about _another_ night spent in the forest, but Daichi was a strong proponent of better safe than sorry when it came to any of his companions in tense social situations.

Instead of a familiar pout, however, he finds that the tension has not dissipated at all; as he watches, Oikawa brings his spear head downward with a flourish that Daichi thinks is more muscle-memory than Oikawa’s natural flair for flashy moves. Whoever had taught him to use the weapon had known what they were doing. Even without a bladed edge between them, the air between Oikawa and their druid is uncomfortably charged.

At length, Ushijima says, as softly as Daichi thinks he knows how, “You did not tell me.”

Oikawa tosses his head, his hair shifting; it is all elvish arrogance. His eyes are hooded when they find Ushijima’s again. “And if I had?”

“I would not have said what I did to you when we met again if I had known, Oikawa. You must know that.”

Kuroo shifts against Daichi’s back, and he thinks that it is because Kuroo is as shocked as he is. None of them know quite why Oikawa hates their most recent addition to the part; he’s never explained to them, and Daichi has instinctively known not to ask. This exchange is more than Daichi has ever learned passively from either of them.

“Ah, trust me—I don’t need your pity, or your pathetic apology, _Ushiwaka_ _.”_ The tension is finally starting to bleed from Oikawa’s tall frame; if he listens hard, Daichi can just hear the faint scrape of the spear tip resting against the ground as Oikawa’s physical strength finally wavers.

“I am not apologizing,” Ushijima says sharply, and Daichi goes tense. He desperately does not want to have to pick sides in a fight between two of his friends. “You were being as deceitful as ever, and it was your intention to make me angry. But despite your feelings about me and our shared heritage, I respect both you and Iwaizumi; I should have known that if he had left you, it would not have been willingly.”

Oikawa flips the spear to rest the butt on the ground. He slumps against it unceremoniously, exhaustion practically radiating from him as he clenched both hands against the haft.

“You should have,” Bokuto speaks up suddenly, wading in between them without further hesitation. “And you should have known that the opposite was true, too. Oikawa wouldn’t leave any of us behind, and he wouldn’t have left another party behind either.” He looks directly into Oikawa’s huge, shocked eyes. “Right?”

“Yes,” Oikawa whispers. “Yes.” He stumbles into Bokuto when the other man extends an arm to him. His spear hangs beside him in a one-handed grip. “And thank you, Ushijima.”

Ushijima cocks his head. His familiar cocks it’s head over Ushijima’s shoulder, dark eyes watchful and unblinking as his tongue flickered.

“For not talking about him in the past tense,” Oikawa clarifies, voice wavering for the first time all night.

As he watches Ushijima bow his head in silent acknowledgement, Daichi feels a soft sting in his heart. He remembers suddenly the tall, arrogant party leader he had first met, years ago before his own party had disbanded to their own adventures or their own new, soft lives.

Kuroo must pick up on a shift in his posture. “You know what he’s talking about?”

Daichi hums, still feeling heart-sick. “When Oikawa and I first met, before this party formed, he traveled with three regular companions. I know he had others who traveled with him occasionally, but whenever we heard of his party it was always at least those three and him. I can’t believe I didn’t remember before—I should have at least remembered the spearman, Iwaizumi.” He leans back into Kuroo’s balancing weight without hesitation. “I’m as guilty as Ushijima, I’m afraid,” Daichi whispers, trusting his voice to only carry to Kuroo despite the sharp ears of his party.

“Perhaps,” Kuroo says without judgement either way. He accepts Daichi’s weight easily, thoughtlessly graceful as they watch the drama come to its end.

“Charming as this little sharing session has been,” Oikawa says abruptly, voice thick and irritated. “I heard that about staying in the forest, Daichan, and let me just say that we will do so over Ushiwaka’s dead body.”

Daichi can just hear Ushijima’s sigh before Kuroo cackles right in Daichi’s ear. “And he’s back, gentlemen!”

“I’m _serious,_ I don’t care what these backwater maybe-racists have to say to me behind my back: they’ll take my money for their best room or I’ll have something to say about it!”

Bokuto bursts out laughing, which sets Kuroo off immediately. Daichi covers his face with a hand and groans. Without them having to ask, he sticks his palm out in between the four of them and waits until a heavy pouch settles into it. They’ve found, through trial and error, that innkeepers—and more importantly, innkeepers’ wives—tend to like Daichi best. He’s not sure if it should boost or offend his ranger’s pride to be so well regarded, but either way, this is usually how the bones fall for him. He lifts his head and tucks the pound into his jacket sleeve swiftly.

“Stay here, try not to make too much of a ruckus and scare the innkeeper, alright?” He pauses ominously as his party looks at him innocently. “ _Alright_?”

A chorus of half-hearted but obedient yesses—Bokuto and Oikawa; a grunt—Ushijima; and a stiffled chuckle—guess who—greet him, but Daichi turns for the inn despite that. He’s learned to take what he can get.

As he gently chats up the innkeeper’s very accommodating wife, however, Daichi finds himself distracted by the Oikawa in his memory, and not the well-matured companion Daichi has run over two-dozen quests with already. Striking, passionate, that Oikawa had been deeply imbedded with his party; all four of them had moved as a unit. A stern spearman, Iwaizumi; a grinning rogue who had always had always been casually juggling or tossing something in his hands, Hanamaki; a tall, stoic man, with bright, laughing eyes and an intimidating longbow that Daichi had never seen strung, Mattsukawa. He had respected Oikawa’s unspoken desire for privacy, but Daichi hadn’t been lying when he had said he was guilty of the same thinking as Ushijima—when Oikawa had joined Daichi’s party of two, Daichi had assumed it was because something had caused his previous party to disband. Bokuto was right—Daichi should have trusted that a group like that wouldn’t have left Oikawa or been left behind willingly.

The innkeeper’s wife—a pretty, distressingly young woman who fiddled with her hair when Daichi smiled kindly at her—concedes their largest rooms without asking to see Daichi’s purse first, for which he’s grateful. He trots back into the innyard just in time to catch Oikawa, who is just slipping completely off of Bokuto’s shoulder in a dead faint. He settles the ensuing worried fluttering—by everyone, even their own resident stoic—and passes Oikawa off to Bokuto to haul to their waiting rooms. He troops along behind them and listens as they settle, but even as exhausted as he is it takes a long while for the frozen image of Oikawa with his proud head thrown back, laughing with three nearly forgotten faces around him, to fade from Daichi’s mind.

When Daichi settles onto his bed for the night, he sighs into the quiet of the room. This is what happens when a man goes against his nature, he thinks ruefully—for a huntsman and tracker trained to both endure and seek out the comfort of solitude, Daichi’s always been an awful meddler. Perhaps a little more meddling would do this party good, he thinks, and smiles when the thought comes to him in Suga’s laughing voice. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from [Penelope's Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn6ysOeqiIs), also by Loreena McKennitt


End file.
